Comparisons of the trilogy usually refer to Hunger Games and similar young adult SF about rebels in a dystopian future. However, this reviewer sees also a Star Wars style to it as well:

Now I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I love Star Wars, love the hodge-podge school of science fiction, with writers endlessly lifting riffs and ideas from their fellows and playing with them until they break. Red Rising was a pastiche of a dozen or a hundred dystopian stories of teenagers growing up and doing exciting and dangerous things — like murdering each other and flying spaceships. Golden Son is the same deal, only with even more murder and spaceships. But what sets these books apart from the over-crowded pack is that Brown is just so friggin’ good at it.

Red Rising was entertaining. Golden Son is so much better. Red Rising was all about set-up and world-building. Golden Son is about smashing everything to pieces as violently as possible. It picks up right where Red Rising left off, with 20-year-old Darrow, secret hero of the Red rebellion — Reds being the bottom of Brown’s color-coded caste system. Darrow is masquerading as a ruling-class Gold, trying to bring down the society that oppresses his people from the inside by gaining power among the Golds and then, somehow, making everything better.